The management of patient data within a hospital's information network has become of critical importance to the provision of care to the patients as well as to the operation of the hospital itself. In a typical hospital setting, a patient may be attached to one or more patient monitors or monitoring devices by a variety of electrodes and/or sensors. These patient monitors collect a variety of data from the patient, including a variety of patient physiological parameters. The monitored patient data is typically then electronically sent through the hospital's information network to a central database comprising the patient's electronic medical history records; alternatively, a clinician must periodically read the physiological data and physically record the data for entry into the electronic patient medical history records.
Many patient monitoring devices are expensive, such that most hospitals do not have patient monitoring devices in a one-to-one ratio with the patients. Therefore, these monitoring devices may be mobile in nature, such as being located on a wheeled cart, so that a clinician may periodically transport the monitoring device to each patient to use in collecting and recording the patient physiological data. The monitoring device may connect to the hospital's network and transmit the physiological data to the patient's electronic medical record (EMR) or electronic health record (EHR) at the request of the clinician. Alternatively, if the monitoring device is not connected to the hospital's network, the clinician may use a computer that is connected to the hospital's network to record the data that is collected and displayed by the monitoring device into the patient's EMR.
However, the electronic recordation of the patient's physiological data in the patient's electronic medical record is not advantageous unless the data recorded is correct. Therefore, it is imperative for the clinician to properly enter the physiological data and to check that the data recorded in the EMR coincides with the data collected and displayed by the monitoring device. Currently, a hospital may use a variety of different models of monitoring devices from a common manufacturer, and/or monitoring devices from a plurality of different manufacturers. Each monitoring device may differ slightly in operation and the display of data. As a result, the clinician must learn the displays of physiological data on each of the monitoring devices. As the clinician moves from device to device during the course of a shift, the clinician may become confused when recording data or verifying that the data in the EMR matches the data displayed by the monitoring device. This leads to unidentified errors in the recorded patient physiological data. These errors may in turn lead to later diagnostic errors. Additionally, in situations wherein the clinician must use a computer to enter the physiological data that is displayed by the monitoring device, the different spatial orientations of the data on the different monitoring devices may cause confusion by the clinician, leading to the entry of physiological data into the improper data fields of the computer. This improper entry of data may include the transposition of physiological parameters, resulting in the recordation of improper physiological data values in the EMR.
Therefore, it is desirable for a device that assists the clinician in verifying that the proper physiological data has been recorded in the electronic patient medical history record.